I've decided to redo the way my personal ini file handles tags I do not want to keep for AO3. It seems that every metadata section that I want (character, ships, genre) to grab from the site has a slew of tags that I do not want.

I had been listing the tags I didn't want and setting them blank, like this:

genre=>Until it isn't=>

However, this was making it hard to search the code. I was wondering if it were possible to set it so it would only apply if it did not match?

For example, say I have a genre 'Angst' and 'Adventure'. I would want it to keep those two tags, but not 'Until it isn't'.

genre!=>(Angst|Adventure)=>

I want the code to only erase the tag if it does not match anything in the parenthesis. ie 'Until it isn't' does not equal Angst or Adventure, so erase the tag.

I looked up the Regexp Tutorial and found how to negate a character, but I do not think that will work as it needed at least one character and I want to negate a whole string. Is there any way me to do this?

Is it possible to make FFDL to set "Date" column not as the day when story was downloaded, but with the date when the story was last updated?
In personal.ini it is only possible to change what will be added to title page, not what will go to which columns.

Is it possible to make FFDL to set "Date" column not as the day when story was downloaded, but with the date when the story was last updated?
In personal.ini it is only possible to change what will be added to title page, not what will go to which columns.

Calibres Date column is when Calibre FIRST make the record entry.
Pubdate would be a better choice for a new 'Edition'

Is it possible to make FFDL to set "Date" column not as the day when story was downloaded, but with the date when the story was last updated?

No.

As theducks said, calibre sets the Date field in at least some cases. As I recall, I tried setting it to dateUpdated, but couldn't reliably.

Quote:

Originally Posted by theducks

Calibres Date column is when Calibre FIRST make the record entry.
Pubdate would be a better choice for a new 'Edition'

The built-in Published(pubdate) field is populated with the Published date from the site--this is the date that the story was first created. I didn't (and don't) want to cause confusion by contradicting the terminology.

What I (and many other users) do is have a custom Updated date column(#updated) that I have FFDL populate from the Custom Columns tab of FFDL config. No personal.ini changes are needed.

theducks, JimmXinu, thank you.
I already made that custom column, but I need that date in completely different place - when converting to fb2 - and I can't find a way to access that #updated column there. So I wanted to see if I can cheat that in your plugin somehow.

However, when I did this, code # 6 only applied to the first one. So, I got:

Book/Comics.LOTR.Bilbo Baggins/Kíli (Friendship)

and

Bilbo Baggins/Kíli (Family)

The same thing happened if the two parenthesis were the same (like (Friendship) (Friendship)). I don't understand why the second tag is not going through the final step. Unless it doesn't seperate the commas into tags until the personal ini is finished. If so, is there a way I can fix this?

For this particular problem, I think it's as simple as switching #5 & #6--do #6 then #5.

That worked. I had some confusion because I had been able to do the same thing in the characters metadata without any problem. However, my code to add the 'Books/Comic' etc, to ships depends on the name being at the begining of the tag (^Bilbo). My character code just looks for the name anywhere in the tag.

That worked. I had some confusion because I had been able to do the same thing in the characters metadata without any problem. However, my code to add the 'Books/Comic' etc, to ships depends on the name being at the begining of the tag (^Bilbo). My character code just looks for the name anywhere in the tag.

That makes sense. The regex matches in the same string more than once then.

Once you've got this all working to your satisfaction, if you'd be willing to share it, I'd be interested in posting on the project wiki as an example for others.

Once you've got this all working to your satisfaction, if you'd be willing to share it, I'd be interested in posting on the project wiki as an example for others.

I can do that. I've almost got it how I want it.

However, it occurred to me that I might have problems if the character or ship contained parenthesis. So I'm trying to figure out what I want to change it to. For example there is a character that I renamed as Gollum (Smeagol) as the character has two valid names.

The only symbols I can think to use aside from ( ) are [ ], { }, < >. I know that [ ] has special meaning in Python. But does either { } or < > have any special meaning in Python?

@Jade Aislin - Without experimenting, I don't really know. You'll have to try each to see. FYI, for < > you should use &lt; &gt; Otherwise it wouldn't show up correctly inside the epub/html/etc. I expect that one may be best.

That does give me an idea for a new FFDL feature, though. I've always had the test1.com adapter that returns dummy stories for testing output and metadata process testing. I could make maybe that configurable so you could set the title, author(s), ships, characters, etc, etc for a test story URL to try out different things without hitting real servers over and over.

@Jade Aislin - Without experimenting, I don't really know. You'll have to try each to see. FYI, for < > you should use &lt; &gt; Otherwise it wouldn't show up correctly inside the epub/html/etc. I expect that one may be best.

I didn't have a problem with < >. When I checked the different symbols using notpad ++ with Python language, the { } lit up the same way that ( ). So, I think the brackets may have some meaning in Python. The < > did not light up, so I used those.

I tried it on one of the ships that contains a name with the < >. It went from: implied Sam/Frodo=>Sam <Samwise Gamgee>/Frodo Baggins=>Frodo Baggins/Sam <Samwise Gamgee> with no problem. It doesn't seem like the &lt; is needed, but I could be wrong.

Quote:

Originally Posted by JimmXinu

That does give me an idea for a new FFDL feature, though. I've always had the test1.com adapter that returns dummy stories for testing output and metadata process testing. I could make maybe that configurable so you could set the title, author(s), ships, characters, etc, etc for a test story URL to try out different things without hitting real servers over and over.

That would be great. I've always had trouble using the test dummy. I've mostly used it to find errors in my code that won't let it run rather than making sure that the output is correct. I would have to sort through the examples that are in the file already before I could figure out what I trying to test. There's been I few times I started writing replacement code for some of the examples in the test file. If I could input what I'd get from the actual site easily, it would be easier to figure out how to get the output I want.